Following WWE "Evolution," Women Wrestlers Are Celebrating Victories and Preparing for Their Next Challenge

World Wrestling Entertainment, better known as the WWE, has been tapping out some of its outdated traditions over the past several years to better grapple with today's modern times. The best-known professional wrestling promotion in the world has undergone a revolution in its women’s division that has transformed it from a once-a-night novelty to a new high watermark: this past Sunday’s WWE Evolution, the first-ever all women’s pay-per-view event.

It’s been 33 years since the first Wrestlemania, a show that featured Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, and Cyndi Lauper. At that inceptive Wrestlemania, women got one spot on a stacked match card—a championship match between Wendi Richter and Leilani Kai. It was just a mere few minutes of a two-hour show.

“They just didn't have access to it,” Charlotte Flair, one of the WWE’s premiere women superstars, told Teen Vogue at WWE Evolution. Speaking about the women who came before her, “They weren't given the opportunity to, so I thank them for opening the doors for us today to be able to do those things today. Because if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have had that opportunity.”

Flair has seized the opportunity made possible by her wrestling foremothers. The daughter of one of wrestling’s most famous men (Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair), she’s made a name for herself as one of the most athletic, hardest-hitting women to foster the WWE’s change from a Divas Divison to a Women’s Division, which took full effect in 2016.

When it was still known as the Divas Division, the women in the WWE were afforded different opportunities. While many of them still broke ground and blazed trails at the top of pro wrestling’s game, there was an element of spectacle — and sexualization — that has started to subside.

"I was there when the Divas were given three- and four-minute matches and I was there for the bra and bikini matches and all these matches that you don't see now,” famed ring announcer Lillian Garcia recently told Wrestling, Inc.. Now, instead of bra and panties matches (which involved stripping your opponent to her underwear for a victory) and bikini contests, the women of the WWE are competing in the contraption known as Hell in a Cell (a massive steel cage), the Elimination Chamber (an even bigger steel cage), and their very own Royal Rumble (a 30-woman extravaganza where one winner is declared when everyone else has been thrown over the top rope).

When she spoke with Teen Vogue, Flair was barely a week removed from putting her current in-ring rival, Becky Lynch, through a wall of LED screens. Lynch and Flair would go on to have the match of the night at Evolution, incorporating two ladders, three utterly destroyed tables, and a couple of giant piles of chairs in the first-ever Last Woman Standing match — a format so named because the winner is only declared when one of the competitors can no longer get back on her feet.

“Every time they give us a first ever, we knock it out of the park,” Charlotte said ahead of her show-stopping first-ever match at Evolution, practically predicting her own future. “And then, it's almost like we build off of that.”

The fans love it, too: “I like how women get to do stuff like men do and have all equal for women and men,” 11-year-old Kelsia Anne told Teen Vogue in the arena the night of the show. That sense of progress is something several of the WWE’s top women express. Alexa Bliss, the five-time, longest-reigning women’s champ in WWE history, says she’s seen in her time with the company.

“Our women are delivering, over, and over, and over again,” Bliss told Teen Vogue. Bliss was unfortunately injured and unable to compete in a match with some iconic women from the WWE’s recent history.

That match featuring women who helped define WWE women's’ wrestling in their own time would be the show opener at Evolution as Trish Stratus and Lita took on Micki James and Alicia Fox in a tag-team match. Stratus rose to fame an archetypal blonde bombshell with technique and speed; Lita, a punk with a penchant for using her underwear as a fashion statement, was part of the high-flying Team XTreme. The duo of fan favorites won their match on Sunday to chants of “You Still Got It!”

“Lita was like my huge inspiration cause she was so different and she stood out because she didn't dress like other women,” Bayley, another big name in the current women’s division famous for her hugs, told Teen Vogue. “I was such a tomboy and I was like you know Lita can do it and she can be who she is and still like succeeded.”

Bayley came up through NXT, a sort of farm team for the WWE to develop main roster talent. She said that getting to grow alongside a talent like Sasha Banks (who she teamed with in a 6-woman tag match at Evolution), is what’s made her career as successful as it has.

“All of us want to be best, and all of us support each other so much, but we all want to be better than one another and it’s like a great competition,” she said. “Everybody wants to top each other.”

And fans are thankful for seeing more women in the wrestling ring. Emma, a 15-year-old at Evolution, says that her favorites such as Sonya Deville, Liv Morgan, and Lynch can make her day: “There’s been times where I’ve been down a lot, and then I’d watch their matches, and it’d make everything feel better.”

For Bayley, the culmination of everything women have achieved in wrestling is part of Evolution’s appeal: “All the generations get to be a part of it, and it’s just really special to actually be here, and experiencing it, and living it.”

The WWE has a history of bringing back big names for its pay-per-views, and a 21-woman Battle Royal gave them a chance to spotlight talent from multiple eras. Nia Jax would ultimately outlast the competition in that match to get the big win. At six feet tall and 272 pounds, Jax has a major size advantage over her competition.

“I feel like being so different in the WWE in the women’s division — it’s been an actual incredibly positive thing,” Jax explained to Teen Vogue. “Young girls and boys all over get to see different kind of women in the spotlight.”

Like Flair, Jax has family ties to the WWE; she the cousin of WWE legend Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Her in-ring talent made her a natural fit to be the first rival for “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey, the former MMA star who has taken the Women’s Division by storm.

“When I got tasked with being her first real singles match, at first I was like ‘Are you sure?’” Jax remembers. “Then I sat back and was like, ‘This is such a huge honor.’” While Jax can’t wait to step into the ring with Rousey again, that honor went to Nikki Bella, one half of the Divas-era sister team, the Bellas.

As the Bellas, Nikki and her sister Brie helped make Total Divas, the reality show about the WWE’s women, a sensation, eventually earning their own spin-off, Total Bellas. Nikki’s feud with Rousey set up a tension between the old and new in the women’s division: an infamous Diva, both in title and persona, facing off with a world-famous athlete better known for her technical abilities than her mic skills.

While Rousey made short work of Bella at Evolution, the match’s ability to build on the old with the new is something other WWE women are excited about.

“If it weren't for the 30-second matches, [if] it wasn't for the Divas era, if it weren't for any of that, we wouldn't have the revolution, and Evolution we have today,” Bliss explains. “And now, our women are having opportunities that you would never expect a woman to have.”

“I knew I was athletic enough and the women were athletic, but they were so put together and so beautiful and they were Divas, so I just never saw myself in that light,” says Flair. “But, now, fast forward to where we are today, I think the message is: 'You can still be bad-ass and a diva at the same time and that's what it's all about.'”

While WWE is embracing the changing tide and giving more stage time to its women wrestlers, there are other elements that still need some fine tuning. There's, of course, the history of racist, xenophobic tropes in the ring along with the company still being called out for its recent associations with the Trump administration. And just this past week, there was huge backlash to a multi-show deal in Saudi Arabia. Two of the company's biggest names, Daniel Bryan and John Cena, were written out of the show. Change doesn't happen overnight, but the WWE's women wrestlers have another match that they're taking aim at: a women’s match as the headliner spot at Wrestlemania.

“The Divas Championship is very much important of our history and those women fought just as hard as we do today,” Flair explains. “It's just over time, the WWE universe wanted more for us, and finally WWE listened. And it takes time. Change takes time.”

“I feel like our women could have even main event WrestleMania," Bliss says. "I truly, truly feel that, and I don't think it's that far off."

“We all want a main event WrestleMania,” Bayley concurs. “And I don't think we're too far from it. I believe we will some time soon.” She says she hopes women’s success will “become a normal thing where it's not a big deal like ‘the first ever’ — it’s just going to become a normal thing and that's all what we really want.”

“I have no doubt in my mind if it doesn't happen this year or the next year,” Flair said of a woman's match as the WrestleMania main event. ”It'll happen in a few years because the women have gone from eye candy to secondary storylines to major feature and faces of this company. That's where I think we're headed.”

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